“Worlds of wonder, days of Judgment”

1. “Worlds of wonder, days of Judgment” Beliefs and Practices in 17th Century New England

2. David D. Hall, Bartlett Research Professor, Harvard Divinity School.

3. Popular Religion • Supernatural • Sybolism of church and sacraments • Ritual enclosing of sickness, death, and moral disobedience • Self-perception of “sinner” • Surveillance of a judging God

4. Puritan Society on the Cusp • Rejection of Catholicism and acceptance of the authority of ministers and magistrates. • Common people continued to accept superstitions that did not directly conflict with Xianity; indeed, they saw these phenomenon as evidence of God and Satan at work in the world. • It’s a world both shaped by the inductive practices of the Protestant Reformation and the slow but “steady dissolution of traditional society.” • A few may not have practiced religion faithfully, but they gave no evidence of rejecting its claims—note to Crowther, you silly atheist, you would have been alone! • Religion for these folk was “a loosely bound set of symbols and motifs that gave significance to the rites of passage and life crisis, that infused everyday life with the presence of the supernatural.” (Hall, 18)

5. Literacy • Mixture of sacred and profane literature—Bible and school books versus bawdy ballads. • All, not just ministers and magistrates, had the right to read the Bible. • “To read or hear the Bible was to become directly into contact with the Holy Spirit. Scripture had no history, its pages knew no taint of time. Its message was as new, its power as immediate, as when Christ had preached in Galilee.” (24) • Through faith, people could understand the Bible, and it was “completely” true. • Still, printed concordances, incorporating scripture into poetry and song, and lifting verses out of context meant that the Bible was mediated to fit the Puritan world view. • Printers paradox: “The interplay of clergy, printers, and readers worked in complex ways to heighten clerical authority and to make it vulnerable to challenges from beneath.” (31)

6. World of Wonders • Thaumaturgy: people saw “wonders” in nature, in unexplained occurrences, in good fortune, and in tragedy. • Mixing of meteorology, astrology, natural history, and apocalypticism. • Biblical tales of mystery, popular folk tales of the supernatural, and experiential testimony of wonders combined to produce reinforcement of all manner of signs and wonders. • Motif: the godly, if they did God’s will, would survive all of the travail of this world—especially the work of Satan and his minions.

7. The New Testament •  And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. (Mark 16:17-18)

8. The “Church” as place and community • Because of the unique rituals that occurred in the church building, puritans conceived that the church was wholly different than the world. • Place of testimony to the ongoing, and often successful, battle with sin. • Unworthy of salvation, deserving of damnation, but thanks be to God for the evidence of election. • Meeting place of the ideal, the imagined faith, and one’s own experience. • “These stolid farmers and their families interpreted the world in ways that softened the strict separation of the elect from the reprobate. Only when some crisis or life passage broke up the rhythm of their situation—an earthquake, say, or marriage, or sudden death—did the sermons of the ministers and the rhetoric of the chapbooks [small, devotional materials] become forcibly significant.” (193) • Puritans valued the sacred community of the church. They established requirements for membership, which included demonstrations of piety. At the same time, they yearned to keep kin within the fold—hence, the half-way covenant, modifications of the meaning of baptism, and a lack of participation in the Eucharist. Cleary, over time, to be in the church was not to be apart from the world. • “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” Romans 12:2. • Although much evidence of impious and backslidden behavior remains, most bought into the concept of the Puritan faith, even if they chose not to live up to its ideals.

9. Ritual • Fast days and other rituals allowed the faithful to act out their sense of danger followed by the assurance of salvation: “always the purpose of ritual was to enact a reversal, as in turning sickness into health, providing passage out of danger, or making visible the hidden. Ritual was a formalized procedure, a patterned means of connecting the natural and social worlds to supernatural power.” (168) • “In general, fast days and thanksgiving reaffirmed the myth that also sustained wonders and church covenants, that God protected people who obeyed moral rules of ‘Christian’ community.” (170) • Confession of sin in ritual formed reaffirmed the notion that sin would be discovered. • Death rituals, including the rhetoric of funeral sermons,. Eulogies, and epitaphs, reinforced basic beliefs about good, evil, God, judgment, the resurrection, etc. • Ritual provided a check against disorder and chaos; it also justified the social order.